Tom Stephens 70 Buick GS

Tom Stephens appreciates vintage muscle. Hes raised a collection of rare-option Bloomington Gold-collection Corvettes of every hue and displacement, and quietly tucked them away in a corner of rural southeastern Michigan. (Hes even got a few concours Hemi Mopars hes done up, though he doesnt like to talk about that much.) Its not an investment thing, its not a show-off thing, its an I-dig-cars thing; Stephens has done large chunks of the work on each of them himself. He figures hes got well over a dozen in all, few of which are ever driven, all of which you could eat off of. Its a struggle for him to figure out which to take to the Woodward Dream Cruise each August.

Dont take that to mean that he doesnt like to drive, however. Stephens is someone thought to be an extinct breed: a car guy working in the highest levels of General Motors. Its true: Tom Stephens, vice-president of vehicle integration, is a far cry from the image of GM-exec-as-former-dish- detergent-marketer that has plagued the company in recent years. The old gasoline-in-the-veins cliches indeed apply here; Stephens will happily roll insider story after insider story off his tongue as if he were telling them for the first time. The 73 Indy-500-Pace-Car-spec 500-cube mill he crammed into a new 78 Coupe DeVille, then sprayed with nitrousa power-adder in its automotive infancy 20-odd years agojust to see what would happen. (How about 0-100 in 10 seconds?) Then theres the half-dozen delivery-mileage 87 Grand Nationals kept on hand for emissions warranty verification that somehow stuck around for ten years instead of five, and his fight to keep the Generals beancounters from crushing them when their covert existence was discovered.

Tale upon tale unfolds, and he plays it matter-of-factly while the listeners eyes grow wide and flash with a variety of moods suited to the story: epiphany, joy, or outrage, depending. Behind the scenes, GM has done more fun and crazy things than we will ever know about. Stephens has had a hand in lots of them.

So, then: What does a man who loves cars, who loves torque and brute force and GM steel, who houses an extensive collection of some of St. Louis finest fiberglass, build for fun? The answer, when this particular one-owner Buick was rebuilt by Stephens in the late 1980s, was to take some late-model factory goodies and pop them under some vintage tin. Starting with a 510-lb-ft, 455-cube mill in a GS tri-shield was a reasonable start but you just know theres more coming. As you might imagine, Stephens had unprecedented access to some outrageous parts and pieces tucked away in various corners of warehouses and under workbenches all over Michigan. If he couldnt find it or make it, he knew who could. Yet he knew this was going to be a driver; he didnt want something he was going to have to be diddling with daily, or crammed full of irreplaceable one-off components that a V.P. of engineering wouldnt have time to fix.

The compromise was something that used easily fixable factory stuffnot an all-out racer to pound his bones on the moon-cratered streets of Detroit, but a ride that would give him a little something extra when called upon. A judicious use of factory components would give Stephens the fix he needed. Sixteens with contemporary rubber, minor chassis mods to tighten things up, a 200-R4 to reduce the revs (these were the days before the 4L60/80E, remember), and a 78-vintage WS6 steering box comprise a large chunk of the mechanical mods here. Not enough to tempt reliability demons, but certainly enough to make this particular GS a far more entertaining ride than it was when it rolled down the line in Flint, and not a bad commuter car. When this car was built a dozen years ago, most of these mods were high-tech stuff. Now, a couple of weekends, a couple of hundred bucks, and a decent wrecking yard could net anyone similar results.

We spent some time behind the wheel with Stephens GS at the Milford Proving Grounds Truck Loop this past May. As youd expect, the 455s locomotive torque was present and accounted for; we shot our static photos atop a 23 percent grade, and I barely had to open the secondaries to climb it. The OD knocks the revs down, and gas mileage soars to 17-18 mpg on the highway. We walked away convinced the single greatest modification A-body owners can make is to install a close-ratio steering box, like a second-gen T/A WS6 box as done here It bolts in easily, should be readily available at a junkyard near you, and at a little more than two turns lock-to-lock, makes what is a large car by todays standards feel as controllable as something decades newer. Stephens insists this mod alone would make things too tippy at the tiller, so his choice of second-gen Trans Am front discs, incorporating the steering knuckle, reorients the front control arms and gives the tires a better contact patch on the road. Add some beefy sway bars and voila! An old A-body with the poise of a new F-body.